


The Choice

by captaincalliope



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 13:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4747502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captaincalliope/pseuds/captaincalliope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Moira the Plentiful was once a wife."</p>
<p>Written for "Five Wives Week" on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice

Moira the Plentiful was once a wife.

She had been hand-picked by the Immortan himself, when he came to Gastown on a typical supply run. He needed a new wife, after the other had died in childbirth, so close to giving him the perfect heir he desired only for his hopes to be dashed as the Organic Mechanic confirmed that neither mother or child had survived. Back then, he had only one wife at a time, wanting to maintain the illusion of a perfect nuclear family with him as the patriarch - it was only when he grew older and more sick that he abandoned this plan to include more, desperate for a healthy son. 

He had spotted her toiling away at the ground, trying to well up the oil beneath the earth's crust with the other workers. He had spotted her, a Full-Life untouched by disease, and had turned to the People Eater to talk business. It had taken some negotiation, but eventually the leader of Gastown had agreed to grant her to him, though not without his own price.

(Moira never learnt what she had been traded for, and had no desire to - she knew her worth was more than whatever the Immortan could have offered, could ever offer, and that suited her just fine.)

Back then, she had been called Em, like her mother before her. There was no need for fanciful names in Gastown, where the people spent their days baking under the sun's harsh glare, bone-tired and weary and only interested in work. There was no time for philosophising or thinking about their true purpose, and she had suspected that the People Eater had made it like that so no one had the chance to realise that they deserved better.

She had been greeted in the Vault by Miss Giddy, who had sat her down on the only bed in the room, surrounded by greens and wordburgers. 

"What is your name, young one?" The History Woman asked, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Em," she replied through her tears, which had began to flow as Gastown became just a blip on the horizon from where she sat in the Gigahorse.

"Have you told him that?"

"No, I-I haven't said anything to him."

"Good," Miss Giddy nodded to herself, then looked straight into Em's eyes. "You can still change it. You see, he'll use it when he- when you're together."

It made sense to Em. She had some vague idea about the reason why she had been plucked from the crowd and guided into his car. The rumours about him spread around Gastown every time he came for a trade run, some outlandish but some that sounded horrible enough to be true. He had called her his Wife, a title that she knew really meant Child-Bearer, and she had tried to stay positive in the face of growing terror but broke down the second the Vault's door locked behind her. 

"What should I be called, then?" She asked, wiping the tears from her eyes. 

"I can't tell you that, it should be something you decide for yourself. Why not take a name from one of these?" 

The History Woman offered her a tattered-looking wordburger, which had taken without a second thought. Em started to read through the pages of the story, which had sounded a lot like her own - a woman taken from her normal life and expected to give birth on the whim of some commander - and sat with her new teacher in silence, quietly absorbing the details and committing them to her memory. After a couple of hours, she spotted a sentence that made her freeze.

'Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose.' 

"I want to be called Moira," she said, taking Miss Giddy's hand and squeezing it, as if it was her tutor who had needed the comfort. "That's my name."

"Then Moira it is," she replied, a small smile on her face.

(Even then, he finds a way to shame her, calls her "The Plentiful" when she gives him imperfect children, all who she loves dearly, and when the fifth daughter comes, she is forced into the Milking Room and barred from the Vault, never to see herself in the pages of the book again.)

... ... ...

The once-wife is now a healer.

She was the one who lifted the switch that controls the water, casting down a rain below which soaks the Wretched who rejoiced underneath like it was a calming salve. She met with the Wives - now Sisters - and Furiosa, and carefully lifted the imperator up with the help of the other Milking Mothers and carried her to their room. She used her knowledge as a medic, her second job when she was working in Gastown, to fix her up with the help of the Vuvalini doctor, both women working together after a brief moment of tension which is broken by Furiosa's weak whine. 

"What's your name, girlie?" she asks the mother, once they finish bandaging the imperator up, looking at her with kind eyes.

(Now that Joe is dead, she can finally be in charge of her own story, become the master of her own fate. She doesn't need to be Plentiful, nor Moira, nor Em, not anymore, and she thinks about that night many moons ago, where Miss Giddy had given her a choice, and thinks that she is being granted another one right now.)

"Margaret," she replies, and it's as easy as flipping the switch had been. "That's my name."

**Author's Note:**

> The book which Moira reads in the story is "The Handmaid's Tale," written by Margaret Atwood. It's not really necessary to read it in order to understand this story, but I think it's interesting to compare that society with the one presented in Fury Road, especially in regards to the themes of freedom and how women find their agency. Thanks for reading!


End file.
